


Everything About Him Was Perfect

by dance_across



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil Is Not Subtle, Dorks in Love, Freaked Out Carlos, M/M, POV Carlos, The Little Reporter's Book of Big-Boy Note-Taking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 21:17:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2165526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dance_across/pseuds/dance_across
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I do like you, Cecil,” says Carlos, because Cecil looks so sad, and because it’s true. Then, the part that’s slightly less true: “But just as a friend.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything About Him Was Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers up to and including episode 33, "Cassette." Also a little bit for episode 52, but you already saw that in the tags.

“You really have to stop this.”

Cecil blinks innocently at Carlos, then takes a long moment to blow on his coffee. “Stop what?” he finally asks.

“ _This_ ,” says Carlos, gesturing for emphasis at nothing in particular. “All the stuff. On the air, the stuff you say. You know. About me. You, saying stuff. You have to stop.”

He feels heat coloring his cheeks, and he makes himself shut up. He makes himself breathe. Carlos often forgets how to form sentences when he’s agitated, and something about sitting across the table from Cecil is making him even more agitated than usual.

The server comes back with another coffee for Carlos – he notes that he and Cecil both take their coffee black – and a quick “Do you need anything else?”

“No, we’re fine,” says Cecil, and beams at her. “Thank you.”

“Okay,” the server says, wiping her hands on her dark green apron. “I’ll be up front if you need me. Owner of that old Mercedes is due back within the hour, and I’m nowhere near done . . . .”

She unties the apron, and tosses it behind the counter before darting out the door that leads out of the not-so-secret Secret Coffee Shop and back into the auto body repair shop that hides it from the view of passersby.

Save for a young girl playing idly with a yo-yo in the corner, Cecil and Carlos are alone.

Carlos takes a sip. Then grimaces and sets his mug down. “This tastes like motor oil.”

Cecil takes a sip, too, and makes a pleased humming sound in the back of his throat. “Doesn’t it? The oil adds a little _je ne sais quoi._ I’ve always thought so. It’s not nearly as good as the jellyfish coffee they’ll have at Big Rico’s in September, but it’s good enough. Besides, Big Rico’s is always so crowded.” He gives Carlos a pointed look. “I wanted us to go somewhere a little more private than that.”

Carlos, mid-sip, nearly chokes. “This isn’t a date, Cecil. You know that, right? Because I told you? Like fourteen times?”

“Sixteen,” Cecil corrects gently. “And yes, I do know. I only wanted to talk to you, Carlos. Face to face.”

“We’ve face-to-faced before,” says Carlos, seconds before realizing that he’s just invented a new verb. His face burns, and he stares into his mug. “Talked before, I mean. We’ve done that.”

“Not alone, and not for any real length of time.” Cecil pauses, then waves a hand dismissively. “Insofar as time can actually be said to have a real length. But, you understand what I mean?”

There’s a purr to his voice that makes Carlos certain that he does, in fact, understand what Cecil means. He means that while he knows this isn’t a date yet, he’s still clinging to the hope that it will _become_ one. Carlos definitely has to put a stop to that line of thinking.

“Did you hear me, before?” he says frantically. “What I said about stopping?”

Cecil’s eyes seem to grow darker, just by a shade. “I always hear you, Carlos. _Always._ ”

“I know you do,” says Carlos, before it occurs to him that that’s a very unproductive thing to say. Quickly, he adds, “But you shouldn’t.”

“Why was I the one you called?” asks Cecil, adding some sugar to his oily coffee.

“Hm?”

“When you realized about time slowing down,” he explains. “You could have called any number of people. Why me?”

This one’s easy. “Because people listen to you. Because, your show, see, I knew you’d say something, and I thought people should know—”

But Cecil interrupts, leaning forward: “So it’s not at all because you wanted to see what I’d say about you on the air if, after all these months, you read the number from the piece of paper I gave you when you first moved here, then touched each digit on the screen of your phone, knowing that each digit brought you one step closer to opening a connection between your phone and mine – which is to say, between _you_ and _me_ – for the first time since we learned each other’s names?”

Carlos blinks. Dialing a phone number wasn’t a big deal. It was just a thing people did. But filtered through Cecil’s description, through the rich tones of Cecil’s voice, it sounded like so much more. It sounded absolutely indecent, in the best possible way.

 _No,_ Carlos corrects himself. _The worst possible way._

Still, best and worst aside, Carlos finds himself wondering what Cecil would do if he knew Carlos saved his number months ago. Or if he knew that this wasn’t the first time Carlos had thought about calling.

For a single, crazy second, Carlos thinks about offering that information, just to see what will happen – but that’s not why he’s here. It’s the _exact opposite_ of why he’s here. He’s here to get Cecil to stop talking about him, so he won’t have to keep turning off the radio in the lab for fear of having to endure another week of his team mocking him mercilessly. _Perfect Carlos and his perfect teeth and his perfect voice and his perfect, perfect hair._

Carlos knows all too well that nothing about him is actually perfect.

So he brushes aside the temptation to tell Cecil the whole truth, and instead he says, “I didn’t call for personal reasons.”

Cecil doesn’t miss a beat: “But you still called.”

“Yeah.”

“And we talked.”

“Yeah . . .”

“And here we are.”

“For the seventeenth time, Cecil, _this isn’t a date._ ” Carlos picks up his mug, thinks better of it, then puts it on the table again. “I should go.”

But before he can move, Cecil’s expression turns from sly to sad. “Is it that you don’t like me?”

The suddenness of the question, almost childlike in its blunt honesty, freezes Carlos in place. He can’t answer, because he doesn’t know how. He’s spent so long convincing himself that Cecil’s attentions are nothing more than a nuisance, he almost believes it.

Cecil continues, “Because while I’m not often wrong about that sort of thing, it does happen from time to time. So if that’s what’s going on, I’d like to know. No hard feelings, et cetera.”

Something about the phrasing piques Carlos’s curiosity. “What made you think I _did_ like you?” he asks.

“Oh,” says Cecil, and reaches behind himself, as one might to retrieve a wallet from a back pocket. His hand doesn’t return with a wallet, though. Instead, he holds a small notebook. There’s something embossed on the front, but Cecil opens it before Carlos can read it. He flips a few pages, then turns it around and pushes it toward Carlos. “Right there,” he says, pointing with one slender finger toward a long paragraph. “That’s from the first time you came to my studio. I was taking notes while we talked.”

_Our eyes met as he told me that I had to evacuate the building. “You aren’t safe,” he said, as the device in his hands whistled and beeped. I replied by telling him that his eyes were just as perfect as his hair, which made him blush and smile, though he tried his best to hide both. “You need to leave,” he told me again. “You and your whole team. Everyone.” And then he followed his own advice, which is a rare and admirable thing for a person to do._

Carlos looks back up at Cecil, who is watching Carlos intently over steepled fingers. Carlos remembers that first meeting, exactly as Cecil describes it. He remembers the exact moment he realized that Cecil was dauntingly attractive, or maybe attractively daunting, or maybe both. He remembers deciding not to say anything about it. There’s one thing, though, that he doesn’t remember:

“ _While_ we talked?” he says, squinting slightly. “But you . . . you weren’t taking notes, though. I was there. You didn’t even have a pen.”

“Why would I have a pen?” says Cecil, blinking. “You think I just go around breaking laws right and left, as if they mean nothing?”

 _Sometimes_ , thinks Carlos. But what he says is, “You weren’t writing, is my point. Pen or otherwise. Do you, um. Do you take notes with your mind or . . . or something?”

Cecil expels a puff of breath that’s almost a laugh. “I take notes in my _notebook_ , Carlos. But the point is that I thought you liked me back.”

“I do like you, Cecil,” says Carlos, because Cecil looks so sad, and because it’s true. Then, the part that’s slightly less true: “But just as a friend.”

“Oh,” sighs Cecil, and looks at his coffee again.

Carlos’s heart twists at the blatant disappointment radiating from every angle of Cecil’s wiry body. He hates himself, just a little, for hurting Cecil like this. But he knows that he would hate himself even more if he let Cecil have what he wanted. Because, if that ever happened…

 _Perfect hair_ would become “Did you know you have split ends? You really should get it cut.”

 _Perfect voice_ would become “Do you always have to sound so… gay?”

 _Perfect teeth_ would become “Your morning breath is even worse than mine. Don’t kiss me, okay?”

 _Perfect Carlos_ would become “You really weren’t kidding about being obsessed with your lab equipment, huh? Also, did you know you can use my gym membership for free? They let me bring guests! It might do you some good.”

And Carlos doesn’t want to go down that road again. Especially not with someone like Cecil, who wears his every emotion right on the surface of his skin. Watching his momentary disappointment over a cup of coffee is far better than watching the slow-burning disappointment that will inevitably end whatever relationship they build in the meantime.

“Just friends,” says Cecil, quietly. Then he smiles again. “But you _do_ like me as a friend.”

Over in the corner, the little girl plays with her yo-yo, as mechanically as a robot. She never misses, and she never looks up.

“Of course I do,” says Carlos. “How could I not?”

-

Cecil scares Carlos; that’s the truth of it. The way his tone of voice jumps constantly back and forth between sincere and sinister. The way he talks about his town, its strange laws, its stranger inhabitants, as if it all makes perfect sense. The way he says Carlos’s name.

The way he _said_ Carlos’s name. Past tense. Because he doesn’t anymore, at least not on the radio.

“Thank you for stopping,” says Carlos, when he runs into Cecil at Big Rico’s one day, a few months later. “I really do appreciate it.”

Cecil’s face contorts a little, into something that’s half beaming smile and half scolded child. “Of course,” he says graciously. “You know I’ll do anything you ask me to.”

As Cecil leaves, holding a plate with a single steaming pizza slice on it, Carlos watches. _Thank you for stopping,_ he said, when what he really meant was, _I miss the sound of your voice saying my name._

But at least his team doesn’t make fun of him anymore. That’s something, right?

Of course it is.

-

Cecil scares Carlos, but not nearly as much as almost-dying scares Carlos. That’s why the phone call from the Arby’s parking lot. That’s why Carlos’s hand on Cecil’s knee. That’s why the truth-telling.

That’s why Carlos can finally remember how to form sentences when Cecil is right there, right next to him.

“I just wanted to see you,” pours out of Carlos’s mouth, and it’s the most honest thing he’s ever said, and his heart feels so, so much lighter for saying it. He thinks about kissing Cecil right then and there, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to ruin this moment by turning it into another moment entirely.

 _Another day_ , he promises himself. And he means it.

-

Carlos kisses Cecil on their first date. On their second date, Cecil kisses Carlos. This time, the kiss lasts longer. There’s tongue. There’s Cecil’s hand in Carlos’s hair, and there’s the slow build of desire in Carlos’s gut as they lean into each other, Cecil’s willowy frame against Carlos’s stocky one.

Then: “Perfect Carlos,” murmurs Cecil against Carlos’s lips – and Carlos freezes.

He hasn’t heard Cecil say _perfect_ in such a long time that he’s forgotten the dull feeling of dread that the word stirs in him. He breaks the kiss.

“I’m not, you know,” he says, adjusting his glasses.

Cecil gives him a loose, lazy smile. “You’re not Carlos?” he teases.

“I’m not perfect. You should stop thinking that. Nobody’s perfect, you know? Least of all me.”

“You are, though,” says Cecil, tenderly touching a finger to Carlos’s temple, then tracing it down his cheek, all the way to his chin. “You’re perfect.”

“But I’m not!” Carlos insists. “You don’t want to see it, but I’m not. You don’t know how moody I am when I’ve got a deadline, and you haven’t seen me naked, and you haven’t asked if I snore, and you don’t know how nerdy and unpopular I was as a kid, and you don’t know that I’m too chickenshit to come out to my parents, and . . . and . . .” He makes himself breathe. “I’m not perfect, Cecil.”

Cecil blinks owlishly at Carlos. “ _Do_ you snore?” he asks, lifting one eyebrow.

Carlos hides his face in his hands. “That isn’t the point.”

“But do you?”

“Not usually,” murmurs Carlos, into his hands. “Sometimes, though. Like if I go to bed drunk. Or if I have a cold.”

The car is quiet for a moment, then Cecil says, “Perfect.”

Carlos growls in frustration. “Cecil, honestly, what would _you_ do in my place? If I started calling you perfect all the time?”

Cecil’s face brightens. “I’d be flattered.”

And Carlos can tell that Cecil absolutely means it. How does he do it? How is he so utterly unflappable all the goddamn time?

It’s infuriating.

“I have to go,” says Carlos, reaching for the car door. “Thanks for dropping me off. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

It’s a week before Carlos sees Cecil again. This time, Cecil waits for Carlos to initiate the kiss. He doesn’t say the word _perfect_ even once.

-

Late at night, alone in his apartment, Carlos begins listening to old episodes of Cecil’s show – the ones he missed because he was in his lab and didn’t want to run the risk of Cecil talking about him while his team could overhear.

But despite all the times Cecil waxed poetic about him, the part Carlos replays over and over is the one where Cecil introduced his listeners to Khoshekh for the first time. He can’t put his finger on exactly why, but something about Cecil’s description of his strange pet makes Carlos smile.

Shortly thereafter, Carlos starts listening to Cecil’s show in real time, whether or not anyone else is around.

-

When Carlos first hears the sound of Cecil’s fifteen-year-old voice coming from the radio speakers, he makes everyone stop what they’re doing. He doesn’t want chatter or the clinking of beakers to get in the way of this.

Together, they listen. Someone – Carlos thinks it’s Indra, the chemist from Columbia University – says that Cecil sounds adorable. She’s right.

But then there’s something about a flickering movement, and something about a brother Cecil doesn’t remember having, and eventually even the name “Gershwin” – so adorable, so odd, so very suited to Cecil – can’t cut through the feeling of dread that’s blossoming in Carlos’s stomach.

He drives to the station during the weather, and he listens to the rest of the show in his car, in the parking lot. He listens as something attacks Teenaged Cecil, and he listens as Adult Cecil crushes the tapes into uselessness. And he waits for Cecil to emerge from the building.

And he waits. Interns leave. The sales team leaves. People he doesn’t recognize leave, as do people who don’t actually look like people. And he waits.

Twenty minutes later, he decides he’d better go in.

A feeling of guilt and dread washes over him as soon as he’s inside – but that’s just his proximity to Station Management’s office, of course, so he picks up his speed until the feeling disappears. Finally, eons later, he arrives at Cecil’s studio.

The door is open. Cecil is inside, sitting on the floor under his desk like it’s a pillow fort and he’s five years old. He’s hugging his knees to his chest.

“Cecil?” says Carlos, cautiously.

Cecil jerks his head up, takes one look at Carlos’s face, and says, “Oh. You heard all the . . . the stuff.”

Carlos nods. “Is there room enough for two under there?”

“Two of us and one thingie of whiskey,” says Cecil, scooting over and holding up a large bottle of Jameson. That explains the way he’s slurring. “You can have some too, if you want.”

Carlos takes the smallest of sips, but no more. Whatever happens next, he wants to be sober for it, especially if Cecil won’t be.

As Carlos settles under the desk – in a space that feels intriguingly larger than it looked from across the room – Cecil leans against him. Carlos drapes his arm around Cecil, hugging him close. Cecil rests his head on Carlos’s shoulder.

“You really don’t remember having a brother?” Carlos asks.

“Don’t wanna talk about it,” murmurs Cecil.

Fair enough. It’s a very raw wound. So Carlos tries a different angle:

“How can I help?”

Cecil sighs against him; Carlos can feel the echo of the motion deep in his bones.

“Be here with me,” says Cecil, speaking more softly than Carlos has ever heard him speak before. “Be here, and stay here, and be with me. Perfect Carlos.”

“I’m not—”

But what begins as a reflex stops short when Carlos remembers something that Cecil said, less than an hour ago and more than twenty years ago.

_No family member is perfect. They become perfect when you learn to accept them for what they are._

Fifteen-year-old Cecil had said that about his possibly-nonexistent brother. Years later, Adult Cecil said much the same thing about Khoshekh.

Carlos thinks he is beginning to understand.

“You’re not what?” asks Cecil, his voice hazy, his body slack.

 _I’m not perfect_ still rests on the edge of his mind, waiting to be said – but he can’t bring himself to say it. Not this time. Not now that he knows what Cecil really means.

“Nothing,” says Carlos.

Perfection, Cecil’s brand of perfection, isn’t about ideals. It isn’t about toned abs or strong arms or being a little less obsessive or a little more masculine. It’s about acceptance.

Cecil accepted Carlos, all of Carlos, before he even knew him. And Carlos, unable to understand, told him to stop. Now, sitting under the desk with the man who's somehow become his boyfriend, Carlos aches to think of it.

“S’right,” says Cecil, nestling closer. “You’re not nothing. Not at all.”

Carlos smiles. “I just meant I’m not going anywhere. Not if you need me here.” He bends and kisses the top of Cecil’s head. Holds him as tightly as he can. “Perfect Cecil.”

“I’m not perfect,” says Cecil. “I’m drunk.”

“Even so,” says Carlos. “Even so.”


End file.
